Gallery Crawling in Prague? Get Out the G.P.S.

Karlin Hall, home of the Prague Biennale.Credit
Pavel Horejsi for The New York Times

RUNNING down a list of Prague’s attractions seems to cover almost everything you could ever want in a European vacation. Fairy-tale castles and ornate palaces? Check. Great night life and music? Got it. Romantic cobblestone lanes, lazy patio cafes and inexpensive food and drink? Definitely.

Great art? Um ...

“Much of the Altstadt possesses all the charming picturesqueness of former days,” wrote the Scottish traveler John Forbes, using the German name for Stare Mesto, or Old Town, in an 1855 book on his journeys. He praised the beauty of Prague’s “narrow and irregular streets, lofty houses of an excellent and extremely varied style of architecture, many highly ornamented” and noted its “ancient monasteries, convents, and churches.” But of Prague’s artistic side, he particularly regretted having completely overlooked at least one of the city’s public collections.

Other writers of the era were more dismissive. “There are scarcely any good pictures in the churches of Prague,” warns a guidebook from 1844, though acknowledging that the buildings there are “vast and splendid.”

A century and a half later, many visitors to Prague might still agree with that assessment. But away from the heavily touristed Old Town, an intriguing contemporary art scene has developed in the last few years, one that includes the big Dox gallery, which opened without much fanfare last October, as well as dozens of more intimate spaces and a huge art biennial that is about to end its 10-week run.

“I think a lot of tourists come to Prague and they’re disappointed,” said Camille Hunt, a long-term resident and a co-owner of Hunt Kastner Artworks, a two-year-old gallery in the Holesovice district on the city’s north side. “We’re in a neighborhood where most tourists wouldn’t normally venture. It’s a little bit hidden.”

It might be relatively undiscovered by outsiders, but Hunt Kastner’s residential neighborhood — between two of Prague’s best-loved green spaces — is considered quite attractive by residents. On summer evenings, big crowds gather under the chestnut trees in the large beer garden at Letna Park, drinking inexpensive Gambrinus beer from plastic cups and drinking in the panoramic sunset over Old Town’s copper and amber rooftops. On weekends, the sprawling Stromovka to the north is filled with joggers, in-line skaters, picnicking families and young lovers.

Small as it may be, Hunt Kastner is becoming an attraction as well, offering works by up-and-coming Czech artists like Josef Bolf and Daniel Pitin and promoting their works abroad at the major art fairs in Basel, London and Miami.

“Fifteen years ago, everyone thought that Prague was going to be what Berlin ended up being now,” said Katherine Kastner, the gallery’s co-owner. “And then something happened, and we went into a kind of Dark Ages. And I think that we’re on the way back up again. I see a lot of things happening and a lot of enthusiasm.”

Czech art hasn’t received as much interest since the days of the First Republic of Czechoslovakia, the prosperous interwar era that has a halcyon glow for Czech society today. Then, the Cubist painter Josef Capek was making antifascist illustrations for Lidove noviny, a leading newspaper, and Czech artists like Toyen, Otakar Kubin and Frantisek Kupka were gaining international renown in Paris. Much of that era’s artistic spirit ended with the German occupation of 1939 — Capek was arrested by the Gestapo in September of that year and died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945 — before being all but destroyed by the Communist takeover in 1948.

Today, not yet 20 years after the Velvet Revolution, the country is trying to recapture an artistic vibrancy it possessed 70 years ago.

“This is a country that was once at the center of a critical discussion between eastern Futurists and French dreamers,” said William Hollister, an editor at Umelec, a Prague-based contemporary art magazine that publishes in four languages, including English. “It’s not a way station anymore, or a link between East and West, but it is a city that is producing a fair share of visual artists who are recognized internationally.”

One of the first to bring international attention to local artists was the Jiri Svestka Gallery, which opened about 15 years ago. Situated in a functionalist apartment building at the end of a dead-end cobblestone lane just outside Old Town, it would be hard for most visitors to encounter by chance.

“In London and New York, there are traditions of ‘gallery streets’ — one street with many galleries,” said Lucie Drdova, one of the gallery’s curators. “But here in Prague, it’s spread out.”

Indeed, though major attractions like Museum Kampa (U Sovovych mlynu 2; 420-257-286-147; www.museumkampa.cz) and Galerie Rudolfinum (Alsovo nabrezi 12; 420-227-059-205; www.galerierudolfinum.cz) are easy to find in the historic center, you’ll need a map to track down the far-flung art spaces. The new Art Map is free at many galleries. The most recent edition lists 66 exhibitions, studios, galleries and arts spaces, many that didn’t exist just a year ago.

One of the biggest new arrivals is the Dox Center for Contemporary Art. Behind its tall facade and flying banners, the nine-month-old Dox has turned a 1911 sheet-metal plant into more than 30,000 square feet of exhibition space. “The whole concept here is that you have a flexible, multipurpose space,” said Leos Valka, the gallery’s founder. Mr. Valka noted that one floor is more than 7,000 square feet and that one of the building’s walls climbs 100 feet. “And we have many small galleries in the tower, so it’s a combination of large and small spaces.”

In one wing is “14 S,” an exhibition that features 14 artists addressing themes that start with S in Czech, including several vibrant fabric-and-thread portraits by Michal Pechoucek. Recently, when I went into the room dedicated to the theme of smrt, or death, I walked under a skeleton perched on a swing high overhead. As I passed underneath, I tripped a sensor, immediately causing something to inflate. Like the skeleton, the piece was created by the artist Frantisek Skala, and it swelled and grew until it reached its final form: a goofy, cartoonlike skull about the size of a single-car garage, with plenty of space above it and around it in the vast hall. I had never contemplated quietus and felt quite so giddy and lighthearted.

Mr. Valka mentioned that there would be an important opening later that week and recommended that I stop by in the evening. There, in the building’s courtyard, I found a crowd of a few hundred people gathered to gawk at the newly installed “Entropa,” the large sculpture by David Cerny that had caused considerable controversy when displayed in Brussels during the Czech presidency of the European Union earlier this year.

The founder of the Meet Factory, his own large studio, cinema and exhibition space in the gritty Smichov neighborhood, Mr. Cerny is best known for handing out artistic raspberries with political overtones, famously painting a Prague monument to the Russian tanks that liberated the city — and later occupied the city — bright pink. In the case of the soaring, 50-foot-tall “Entropa,” Mr. Cerny had depicted most of the European Union member nations with scenes playing on stereotypes. Bulgaria was depicted by Turkish toilets; Germany was represented by cars moving down crisscrossed autobahns that slightly resembled a swastika.

Though it was fun to plumb the sculpture’s symbolism, there was even more worth gawking at among the crowd, including three men in Mr. Cerny’s typically all-black attire, all of whom claimed to be the artist himself. Grabbing a free glass of white wine, I bumped into a friend who started a game of spot-the-celebrity: there was the young artist Krystof Kintera; that was Vlado Milunic, the architect who co-designed the city’s Dancing House with Frank Gehry; there was the poet Ivan Martin Jirous, better known as Magor. And then, on stage with a few words to mark the occasion, was a man whom after nine years of living in Prague I had never seen in person: the former dissident, president and playwright Vaclav Havel.

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It was, my friend remarked, a bit like seeing the Dalai Lama. In Mr. Havel’s calmly bemused presence, the party took on a beatified mood, although that might also have had something to do with the free wine.

As it does with almost everything else in Prague, partying seems to go with art. At least one gallery is connected to a pub: the two-year-old 35m2, a reference to its size of about 35 square meters, about 375 square feet.

“It’s actually less than 35 square meters, closer to 33,” said Petra Steinerova, the owner of the gallery and its sister bar, Café Pavlac. “But we didn’t like that name, so we called it 35.” It is east of Old Town, in the hilly Zizkov neighborhood. The exhibition area, off the courtyard behind the bar, is just two small rooms. While it has held shows with as few as four works, Ms. Steinerova said, a recent exhibition included 18 figurative oil paintings by the young artist Zuzana Ondrouskova.

Curating the space with Michael Pechoucek, Ms. Steinerova puts an emphasis on new artists, with one show from a more-established artist each year. Though 35m2 is not centrally situated, she noted that it had an advantage in being close to the pedestrian tunnel leading from Zizkov to Karlin, running directly through Vitkov Hill, which separates the two neighborhoods.

Wedged between the hill and the Vltava River to the north, Karlin is the neighborhood probably closest to developing into an arts district, in part because of Karlin Studios, a creaky old building that was turned into artists’ workshops in 2005. Up several sets of rickety stairs are the ateliers, many of which seem to keep their doors open, and the editorial offices of Umelec. On the ground floor is an exhibition space where a recent show featured video installations by Radeq Brousil.

The opening, Mr. Brousil said, had been another excellent party. “We had onion soup,” he said, “and there were D.J.’s playing.”

Just five minutes by foot from Karlin Studios is the Karlin Hall, a former industrial building and now home to the Prague Biennale, which runs through July 26. Now in its fourth iteration, the biennial has a reputation for working on the cheap (the lighting is minimal to nonexistent, meaning viewings have to end by sundown) and for offering the first appearance of emerging artists from Central and Eastern Europe.

“We were the first to introduce Victor Man, from Romania, in a big international exhibition here in 2005,” said Helena Kontova, who directs the biennial with her husband, the Italian art critic Giancarlo Politi. “We were the first to show Andro Wekua, from Georgia, and he’s a huge international success now.”

The building seemed to have once housed heavy industry, and its floor was scored with the evidence of machinery, including a set of rails imbedded in various strata of asphalt and concrete. On my last visit, I found myself staring at one of the decaying back walls, where I noticed a repeating pattern of perfect circles in the rough and riddled surface.

Once I was close enough, I recognized what they were: cookies that had been inserted into specially made holes in the wall during the second Prague Biennale in 2005, part of an installation by the Czech artist Jiri Kovanda. Invisible unless you knew where to look, the cookies struck me as a good metaphor for the city’s art scene.

It might not be Berlin, Basel or Venice, but it still had some nice surprises hidden in plain sight.

I took one of the cookies out of the hole and blew off some of the dust. For a long second I thought hard about taking a bite, then put it back and set off, looking for other unexpected treats.

AN ART SCENE THAT REQUIRES A WIDE FRAME

GETTING THERE

Both Delta and Czech Airlines offer nonstop flights between Prague and Kennedy Airport in New York; other airlines offer one-stop trips via hubs in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Milan, Paris and elsewhere in Europe. Fares for later this month start at around $1,100 for a nonstop flight, based on a recent Web search. The same search turned up flights with a connection in Europe starting at $978.

For up-to-the-minute luxury, it’s hard to beat the Augustine (Letenska 12/33; 420-266-112-233; www.theaugustine.com), a 101-room hotel of the British Rocco Forte chain that opened in May. In July, online bookings start around $445, including breakfast.

The Kempinski Hybernska (Hybernska 12; 420-226-226-111; www.kempinski.com) opened last fall. Most of its 75 rooms are suites. For July, the hotel’s Web site has doubles starting at about $260 for a 30-day advance purchase.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page TR10 of the New York edition with the headline: Gallery Crawling in Prague? Get Out the G.P.S. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe